• Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    The worst end of behavior is genuinely worse now than it has been for a long time. There have always been problems with it, particularly related to prejudice and class, but casual violence in public was very unusual through most of the previous century. People physically attacking waiters, store clerks, and flight attendants over minor frustrations is a recent development. People sending death threats to strangers as a way of expressing disagreement is mostly new. (As an example, open source software developers now routinely get death threats over bugs or a failure to add particular features.)

    Many things that used to be recognized and widely condemned as dangerous behavior have become normalized. Any behavior we accept as “normal” will become so. Is this the world we aspire to?

    • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If only the DHS or FBI, having tapped everyone’s cell phones, would actively police those sending the death threats.

      …if only…sigh

      Since they don’t, it appears that this is the society they prefer for us all to live in, which is even more chilling, imo.

      Physicality doesn’t scare me. People can see fuckwads like this OK Rep threatening fist fights and think they can do the same, but in America, where people pack heat to go to the playground, the dumb few who fuck around will find out real fast, and then those behind them thinking the same will watch as no charges come up due to stand your ground laws and basic self-defense survival instincts.

      The public is being primed to lash out prior to the election. They’ll try to raise the heat without it boiling over until next November, then everything is on the table, and rules only apply to the surviving losing actors. Just watch. The playbooks as old as time.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        in America, where people pack heat to go to the playground, the dumb few who fuck around will find out real fast

        The problem is those packing heat are also people, also with the same issues. What makes you assume the dumb few who fuck around are not also packing heat?

        This is actually a big reason I’ve been coming over to the side of gun control. For whatever reason these horrible behaviors seem to be becoming more common or there’s less peer pressure preventing it, the last thing we need is to combine that with lethal weapons